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Sunday, 21 June 2015

Romance Festival Live & Giveaway

Yesterday I was invited to the Romance Festival Live event at the the new offices for Harper Collins at London Bridge. I've participated in Twitter & FB chats and watched hangouts for the previous online Romance Festivals but this was the perfect opportunity to chat to authors, publicists and fellow bloggers in person rather than via a computer screen.

We were totally spoilt by an abundance of talented authors, not just those shown in the invite, so I apologise in advance if I miss anyone out in this post. The other lovely authors there were Alexandra Brown, Lucy Holliday, Carmel Harrington, Zara Stoneley, Erin Lawless and Bella Osborne.

But to make a total day out of it in London I arrived a couple of hours earlier and headed off to Trafalgar Square to catch the start of West End Live and despite the weather being a bit overcast & drizzly the atmosphere was electric.

Whilst there I managed to catch the final song from Les Miserables (my all-time favourite musical), Beautiful (the Carol King story), Mamma Mia (which literally had everyone dancing in the street) and then finally the Jersey Boys. I could possibly have stayed a little longer to watch whoever came on afterwards but I wasn't sure how long it would take me to get from Trafalgar Square to London Bridge.

On arrival we mingled in reception until we were taken up to the 14th floor where we were welcomed by the totally glamorous Cara from Mira/Mills & Boon and offered a never ending glass of Pink Prosecco (as the lovely barman seemed to be continually topping it up!).

The view was amazing but even though I'm not normally afraid of heights I didn't want to get too close to the completely floor to ceiling glass windows to look down!

We had a little welcome introduction from Charlotte at Harper Impulse and Anna at Harlequin who introduced us to the authors in the room and then it was a chance to mingle and talk about our favourite topic... BOOKS!

I didn't take too many photos as I was too busy chatting but here are just a few of the lovely authors who I met throughout the afternoon.

As always it was lovely to meet up with some fellow bloggers who I chat to on a regular basis but it's also lethal because you end up talking about book recommendations as if we don't all already have enough to read!

Me, Laura, Julie, Amanda & Rea

It would have been totally remiss of me to not go and check out the infamous Harper Collins wall of books and OMG it is totally impressive... I could have spent hours looking at it to try and find some of my favourite books... the photos below do NOT do it justice (click on the photos if you want to see a bigger image).

I would like to say a massive thank you to everyone at Harper Collins, Harper Impulse and Harlequin/Mills & Boon for the invite to this fabulous event and making us feel so welcome. I had an amazing time and could have spent hours chatting to everyone, the time just seemed to fly by and I know I didn't really get a chance to speak to some of the others there so we need another one soon ;-)

As if the invite to chat to authors was not enough we were also totally spoilt by being given a gorgeous Mills and Boon tote bag filled with books, t-shirt, notebook, magnet notepad, postcards and an exclusive chapter extract of Anouska Knight's next book Letting You Go.

But if that was not enough we were also told to take a pick of any of the books on the shelves.... like a kid in a candy shop this was a book lovers dream... so I ended up picking up a couple of books that I already had in eBook format so that I could now have the choice of eBook or Paperback as well as a couple of others.

As I already had copies of The Life You Left by Carmel Harrington, Some Kind of Wonderful by Sarah Morgan and A night in with Audrey Hepburn by Lucy Holliday I asked the authors to sign these copies so that I could run a giveaway for one lucky follower to win all 3 books (I'm also going to include the Harper Impulse t-shirt from the goodie bag as sadly being a larger lady it doesn't fit me.)

So you know the drill enter via the Rafflecopter form below and the winner will be picked at random once the giveaway finishes. Giveaway is open to existing followers only, any entries from 'new' followers will be voided.

Wow! Sounds like a dream day out! I love looking at photos of Harper Collins offices. I'm very jealous. What a great bunch of authors to meet too :) Could you not fit the whole bookshelf in your bag, to save choosing???